Saturday, January 15, 2011

Crisis? What crisis? The £15m 3-bed flat on sale in London

The Candy brothers' One Hyde Park opens this week... with £1bn worth of flats already sold, proving there are still some squillionaires out there. Entry-level buyers need not apply...

An electric sliding door (left) effectively seals off the bothersome chatter from Knightsbridge's hoi polloi. The glass is triple-glazed but not, perhaps disappointingly for some buyers, bulletproof... The curtains (silk, of course) will automatically close if the sun's glare becomes too much. Entertaining Guests: Never mention the air-con (right). In One Hyde Park's apartments it's cunningly concealed and linked to geothermal boreholes that run 140m below street level. See? Tread softly: The two seating areas in the living room are carpeted with Chinese silk rugs, embossed with a geometric pattern designed by Candy & Candy

One Hyde Park. Even for ultra-luxury property kings the Candy brothers, that's quite a postal address - nestling neatly between Knightsbridge and Hyde Park, and more desirable than any piece of Britain not owned by the Royal Family.

The development contains 86 luxury apartments (plus three boutiques - naturally, Rolex and McLaren are already signed up).

Work to live or live to work? Who cares? The carpet in the study (left) is Chinese silk, and the walls are lined with cream leather. LED lights illuminate the leather-lined shelves, and the desk and chair are made of ebony and vellum. The furniture out on the terrace (right) is supplied by British firm Indian Ocean, and made from brushed aluminium

Establishing exactly how many have been sold - and how ludicrous the prices are - has become a highly entertaining cat-and-mouse game for the media, because only putative owners are ever told the precise details.

But Live understands that a one-bed starts at about £6.5 million, and that over 60 per cent of the flats have been sold - which could be either disappointing or (considering the prices) very encouraging for the Candys, depending on how you choose to look at it.

Residents of One Hyde Park can call on valets, a concierge and butler room service from the next-door Mandarin Oriental hotel's two restaurants, overseen by Heston Blumenthal and Daniel Boulud. Don't forget to buy your lottery ticket this week and it could be yours'...

At the other end of the gilded scale, a penthouse reportedly sold for £140 million last summer - instantly becoming the most expensive property in Britain.

A three-bed apartment such as the 3,056 sq ft showcase flat pictured here would start at about £15 million - and that's unfurnished.

But owners who worry they might have paid through the nose can easily reassure themselves: One Hyde Park-ers enjoy sumptuous shared features including a cinema, a 21m swimming pool, saunas, a gym, a golf simulator, a wine cellar and - naturally - a valet service.

And they can call on valets, a concierge and butler room service from the next-door Mandarin Oriental hotel's two restaurants, overseen by Heston Blumenthal and Daniel Boulud. One Hyde Park opens this Wednesday.

Don't forget your toothbrush: The master bedroom (left) is encased in wall-to-wall beige stone and grey St Laurent marble, with a solid plinth of marble used for the sinks and bathtub. The marble is one of 15 types used in development, sourced from several countries, including Brazil, Italy, France and Turkey. £100 million worth of glazing and bronze cladding has been used in the apartment blocks (right), which are designed to let as much light as possible through from Knightsbridge to Hyde Park

Three companies - Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Company - came up with the designs and, at the end of last year, all three won a contract from NASA to research, develop and test their concepts in 2011, meaning these futuristic ideas could have the potential to take flight.

The designs came about after NASA revealed it was aiming to develop a line of 'super planes' that are faster, larger, quieter - and burn fuel more efficiently and cleanly than their present counterparts.

Cutting edge: The Northrop Grumman concept is twice as nice as current aircraft

Criteria set by NASA meant that each design had to fly up to 85 per cent of the speed of sound, cover a range of about 7,000 miles and carry between 50,000 and 100,000 of payload; either cargo or passengers.

Now, each of the three companies will spend the rest of this year exploring, testing and simulating their designs in the hope that NASA will choose it for development.

Cleaner: All three designs - including this one from Lockheed Martin - were required to have green credentials

How likely it is for these designs to get off the ground is under debate. A spokesman from technology and innovation website Fast Company told the Huffington Post: 'Given how long it usually takes to craft an aircraft from scratch, and bearing in mind how many technical hitches the revolutionary Boeing 787 Dreamliner has suffered, these are the sorts of aircraft that these three firms are probably beginning to design for real right about now.'

Unlucky for some: How hitherto unknown 13th sign of zodiac Ophiuchus could be why your stars never seem right

Horoscope horror because Earth has 'wobbled' out of alignment with the moon

Most who thought they were Virgo are actually Leo - but only in the East

If your horoscope has never made any sense to you, there may be a good reason why - it could be out of date.

Astronomers have called for the zodiac signs to be overhauled because they no are no longer accurate.

The ancient Babylonians based zodiac signs on the constellation the sun was ‘in’ on the day a person was born.

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13th sign of the Zodiac: Ophiuchus represents a man wrestling a serpent and was discarded by the Babylonians because they only wanted 12 constellations

But during the thousands of years since, the moon's gravitational pull has made the Earth shift on its axis and created a one-month shift in the stars' alignment.

Astronomers are now proposing to move all the star signs back one month and introduce a 13th star sign, Ophiuchus, to help readjust the zodiac calendar.

The change will come as a shock to many who will discover they have been reading the wrong star sign their entire lives - and will not necessarily be happy with their new ones.

Those under dominant and creative Leo could now find themselves a Cancer, which means they are moody and sensitive.

A passionate Scorpio could become a more diplomatic and balanced Libra whilst if you were a Taurus, you could now find yourself a stubborn Aires.

The change was suggest by Professor Parke Kunkle, who teaches astronomy at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

Astronomers study space and the stars from a scientific viewpoint whilst astrologers write horoscopes and claim that celestial bodies can give clues to personality traits.

Professor Kunkle said that those who read theirstar signs could have been reading the wrong one their whole lives and should readjust accordingly.

‘When astrologers say that the sun is in Pisces, it's really not in Pisces,’ he said.

STAR WARS: REVENGE OF THE SIGN

There are two major systems that control our zodiac signs - tropical astrology and sidereal astrology.

Tropical astrology is based on Earth's relationship with the Sun and the four seasons.Earth's precession

It preserves the seasonal associations of the star signs worked out by early astrologers by laying out new horoscopes against a first-millennium sky.

The Earth 'wobbles' on its axis, so the star constellations we see change over a cycle of 26,000 years

So it is irrelevant that the solsticial points (tropics) have drifted from one constellation to another over time as the relationship is symbolic.

Tropical astrology is mainly practised in North America and Europe.

The alternative is Sidereal astrology which is the Hindu system and is also practised by some western astrologers.

It is based on Earth's relationship with the stars and therefore zodiac signs against the actual sky.

An adjustment is made for the 'precession of the vernal equinox'.

This is the gradual shift in the orientation of Earth's axis of rotation, which traces out a cone once every 26,000 years.

Therefore the dates of the zodiac signs change.

‘Historically, people looked at the sky to understand the world around us. But today I don't think people who are into astrology look at the sky very much.’ The signs of the zodiac have roots in mythology and relate to the legend of how the 12 Olympian gods took animal shapes to flee the monster Typhon who was causing havoc on Earth.

They date back to Roman and Babylonian times and are based on the ecliptic, which is the path of the sun over the celestial sphere, or imaginary path around the Earth for a year.

In the beginning your star sign was indeed determined by the constellation in the sky that the sun lined up with at the time of your birth.

Since then, however, astrologers have adopted a mathematically equal division of the sky, so the position of the constellations is no longer relevant.

The proposed 13th star sign, Ophiuchus, is a constellation in space and existing prints of its symbol indicate it is a heavily muscled individual holding a snake to the sky.

Those born under Ophiuchus are said to have lofty ideals, enjoy longevity and are inventive. Those who are currently Scorpio or Saggitarius could make the switch.

The story has sparked controversy and debate around the world and instantly became the most popular topic of conversation on microblogging site Twitter, where some users were aghast at the change in their fortunes.

One woman summed up the feeling of many when she wrote: 'I am now a Cancer. I went from being the top of the zodiac..Leo the courageous lion - to a crab!' Daily Mail astrologer Jonathan Cainer vehemently denied Professor Kunkle’s claim and said that it was the work of a ‘jealous astronomer’.

‘He is right that the Earth has moved but astrologers have not for years based their predictions on the constellations,’ he said.

‘The star signs are named after the constellations of stars but they are not based on them or their positions in the sky.

‘For thousands of years we have used mathematically equal divisions of the ecliptic.

‘This is either wilfully ignorant or mischievous and malevolent and shows that the scientific community reacts in a bigoted way when faced with mysticism.

‘There is no need for people to adjust their star signs or for a 13th star sign to be introduced. This is just a load of nonsense’.

Exploration of the Three Counties System began in 1928 and continues today with
passionate cavers like Sam Allshorn seen here climbing out of a Maelstrom on the
fixed rope in the upper shaft in Lancashire

The cutlery conundrum

A BYOC (Bring Your Own Chopsticks) movement in China discourages the use of disposable chopsticks opting for environmentally friendly options where participants use their own cultery when dining out. Photo / Thinkstock

For the humble chopstick, life is predictable. Start off as a tree, one of the 25 million felled each year for the purpose. Spend a brief few weeks, newly whittled, encased in paper. Then wind up on someone's plate, where you are expertly used to shovel noodles, or rice, or meat into a mouth. Then that's it. It's time to face the great landfill in the sky.

Millions of chopsticks meet their end like this. In fact, billions - 45 billion a year in China alone, taking with them some 100 acres of birch, poplar and bamboo forest a day. It is one reason why attempts are under way to turn the Chinese off their disposable cutlery and on to the longer-lasting kind.

In 2006, the Government introduced a 5 per cent tax on all disposable wooden chopsticks following petitions from schoolchildren and citizens' groups.

Since then, efforts to curb the wooden sticks' use have increased. A BYOC (Bring Your Own Chopsticks) movement has been actively petitioning for sustainable options for some time. Described by theChina Post as a collection of "young yuppies", they carry around their own implements when dining out.

Occasionally, claims the Post, restaurant owners take it upon themselves to reward the yuppies' efforts with a complimentary bowl of soup. Greenpeace launched a campaign with the slogan "say no to disposable chopsticks".

In 2008, activists dressed as orangutans invaded corporate cafeterias - Microsoft, Intel and IBM among them - to discourage diners from going disposable.

Then, earlier this year, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce joined with five other government departments to warn that companies using disposables could soon face legal restrictions. They claimed to aim at decreasing the use of the throwaway utensil.

"Production, circulation and recycling of disposable chopsticks should be more strictly supervised," they explained. It's a stark about-face for the Chinese Government. Prior to the measure, they had actively encouraged disposables' use. They were, reasoned authorities, more hygienic that their reusable cousins.

The debate over throwaway instruments, while raging in China, is by no means limited to chopsticks. In the UK, disposable cutlery is thought to be used for an average of three minutes before being discarded. Plastics - including convenience cutlery, crockery and cups - account for 7 per cent of office waste (the overwhelming bulk, unsurprisingly, is paper).

That's before the countless millions of knives, forks and spoons churned out by fast food restaurants, cafes and supermarkets are taken into account. Recent years have seen the rise of the Carry Your Own Cutlery (CYOC) movement, while websites such as Recyclethis.co.ukoffer readers advice on how to reuse their plastic implements.

Increasingly, retailers are under pressure to offer, if not reusable, then at least recyclable options. Starbucks recently pledged to introduce renewable materials during its next round of store upgrades and has committed to using entirely recyclable cups by 2015. Pret a Manger, meanwhile, has pledged to go "landfill-free" by 2012. Not everyone has been so quick to change.

McDonald's, while using recycled paper in much of its packaging, defends its choice of plastic cutlery on the grounds that washing up would waste energy.

How effective China's measures will be remains to be seen. The BYOC has been slow in picking up active support, and the Government's waste warning, while a step in an environmentally friendly direction, is more bark than bite. Legislation is looming, though as yet there are few concrete incentives for diners to trade in their disposables.

Wooden chopsticks cost restaurant owners a fraction of what the more durable alternatives do, since the cost of sterilisation is high. What's more, the alternative melamine-resin chopsticks have a notoriously high formaldehyde content, which is neither great news for the environment nor diners' health.

Polls by news outlets have found broad support for reusable items. Some 84.2 per cent of participants told a recent Sina.com poll that they would swap for more durable options. Still, analysts point out that the authorities' interest is divided.

Environmentally, cutting down on chopsticks makes sense. Economically - in the short term at least - it doesn't. More than 300,000 people are employed by the wooden chopstick industry, across 300 factories. Exports of their wares bring in $200 million a year.

In 2009, it was claimed that 300 restaurants in Beijing had ceased to provide disposable chopsticks. In a country of 1.3 billion, there's a long way left to go.

What you can do

* Carry your own chopsticks

* Invest in your own coffee-on-the-go cup, most cafes in NZ readily accept these

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About Me

So much news today is dull, depressing, controversial. It's almost impossible to watch news without hearing story after story of war, terror, killing, destruction, government, corruption, etc. I come across weird and wonderful news items as I scan the worlds press that put a smile on ones face or distract one from all the doom and gloom. These are the stories that will make up "The Quirky Globe". If you have any reactions to articles please leave a comment.... it may encourage debate. Pass this site on to your friends who are also fed up with mainstream news and become a follower. Enjoy and smile.